a new generation of kindles will be shipped in late february.

It turns out that most of the rumors and leaks were accurate. Today Amazon announced a brand new, prettied up, thinner and taller version of kindle, their wireless electronic ink portable reading device. While I was kind of skeptical of version 1.0 and am slightly embarrassed to admit that my own reading rate hardly justifies the purchase, I will admit that I was thoroughly impressed when I played around with a kindle at home over the holidays last year. The latest, at the same $359 price point, looks even slicker and more tempting. But because Jeff Bezos and Stephen King showed off the new version in NYC instead of in Amazon’s own beautiful hometown of Seattle, we’ll have to rely on second-hand hands-on accounting from shinier, happier bloggers who got a chance get their paws on it this morning at the Morgan Library for first impressions. [gizmodo]